Of all the six characters, a Fresh 70 Witch Doctor is, without doubt, the most powerful. It’s not only the best fresh 70 build, but the one most easily manipulated…

The build can afford to make speedy selections since it’s so powerful. Simple rune, skill and passive changes can boost your toughness or survivability by a huge amount. The default skillset above is a balance of power and speed – but here’s what you would change first if you’re try hard:

As you can see you have a lot of rune choices, skill choices, too, as Locust Swarm (and Haunt somewhat) are optional. What does this mean? You have a lot of space to jump in power, when you get a game-changing legendary. I won’t list down all the possibilities, as they’re endless – but I hope you have enough wisdom to adjust your build to give you the most powerful setup at any given time.

Right after I posted about pig sticker I got the wormwood lol. That staff is so good I HAD to unequip it to complete the set dungeon. It would kill everything before I could do anything lol. Its gonna be hard to let this staff go.

Brilliant guide! Perfect and exactly what I needed for the new ladder.
Only suggestion would be advice to slowly transition into what looks like the most powerful build this season, which seems to be Jade Harvester.

I am using Z6 and have tried to follow this guide as closely as possible but I just can’t seem to get my fetishes up past 8. I am using haunt and I spam it liberally and move around and stuff. I tried acid rain but it just doesn’t work for me that well because it is not fire and forget like haunt (targeting issues) and I run out of mana so quickly and then stand there twiddling my thumbs. So not sure what I am missing because I am trying different things but since my gems got to 25 I can’t get past GR40 (T7) in time and that feels like I am behind the curve.

Advice? Suggestions? Appreciation in advance and thanx for the bitchin’ guide 🙂

last time I played diablo 3 was at the auction house disaster.Now I am back,taking a break from overwatch and the game completely change,without thinking about my build its already enormous,You helped me a lot and I really appreciate the time and effort you put on this.
Thank you very much

Am I using acid cloud wrong if I am not getting Fetishes up to the passive max? I can do it easily with haunt but that is also much easier to spam.
Love yalls guides btw, third season using them and it is always great.

You’re absolutely correct and that’s why I mentioned both of those skills. Fetishes are much easier to gather with Haunt compared to Acid Rain. But alas, the Haunt coverage is pretty bad. Honestly there’s no way around suffering usability issues of Z6 early on.

Yes, you get them up faster. Also, in the eventual Darts build keep in mind that the belt only triggers off SPENDERS. The Passive works with all attacks. It can be suboptimal to have them both, but in the early game – them working in tandem can be a load off your mind.

Thank you so much for this guidea. It helped me out a ton. I am new to seasonal and Diablo 3. I am confused when you say ‘GR 38 is enough to 25 a gem.’ Does that mean I need to get to GR38 to get a gem up to 25? Thanks again.

You can now start farming for items (getting ancient legendaries, death’s breath, materials for kanai-ing). Long term goals are up to you really. You can aim to climb the WD leaderboard, complete the season journey (shift+J) to get stash tab/s or just complete achievements (Y). It depends on you.

This guide is to help you somehow beef up your fresh 70 witch doctor, with or without the free set, so you could go clear higher torments asap. Once you’ve completed the above, you can even try other Witch doctor set builds or classes.